This Shabbat is Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat that follows Tisha B'Av. Traditionally, Shabbat Nachamu is the first of the seven Shabbatot on which we read haftarah readings that lead us through the transition from the darkness of Tisha B'Av to the redemption of Rosh Hashanah. The first of these seven haftarot, from which "Shabbat Nachamu" receives its name, begins with the Hebrew phrase, "Nachamu nachamu ami!", "Comfort, O comfort my people!" (Isaiah 40:1).

Why is the word "Comfort" said twice? One traditional answer is that both the First and Second Temples were destroyed, so God had to wish double comfort for Israel. 

Another answer is a bit more complex. In the second verse of the haftarah reading, Isaiah says somewhat enigmatically, "Jerusalem…has taken from the hand of Adonai double punishment for all her sins" (Isaiah 40:2). Double the punishment, I suppose, requires double the comfort. But a double punishment also suggests a double sin. 

To find that "double sin," we can look at the words of the prophet Jeremiah (which we read in the haftarah two weeks ago): "For My people have done a double wrong: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of Living Waters, and have hewn for themselves cisterns, cracked cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jeremiah 2:13).

Here is our double sin. We have left God and we have put our trust in things that are not God and that cannot help us. Double is our toil. Double is our trouble. 

This morning, I heard on the news some real double trouble. Near the town of Nablus in the West Bank, Jewish settlers set fire to two Palestinian homes and killed an 18-month old Palestinian boy. They even had the chutzpah to leave a message claiming that it was done in the name of "King Messiah."

Here's the other half of our toil. In Jerusalem yesterday, an ultra-orthodox man attacked a Gay Pride parade with a knife and stabbed six people. Two of them are in serious condition. One of them is critical. 

On this Shabbat, the "Shabbat of Comfort," I feel sorely in need of comfort. The sin of our times is double and it is great. At the same time as we claim to be following God's ways, we are desecrating God's name. We have turned away from God and we have begun to worship our own certainty of our moral grandeur and our superiority. We have rejected the Fountain of Life and we have poured our water into broken cisterns.

Please, God, heal us. Comfort us.

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.

"Listen, Israel. Adonai is our God. Adonai is One."
– Deuteronomy 6:4

There is a tradition that says that we should cover our eyes when we recite the first six words of the Shema during the morning and evening service. There are many explanations for this practice, but the most common is that we should prevent ourselves from being distracted when we recite such an important prayer (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 61:5). 

But what would distract us? If we are truly engaged in prayer, it seems to me, we should be be able to endure anything unusual that might enter our field of vision – an unexpected flash of sunlight, a person walking nearby, or an insect flying in front of us. Why should such trivialities bother us while we declare God's unity and the idea that ours is the God of the universe?

But there is a deeper possibility in the meaning of this practice. When we recite the Shema, we are declaring God's oneness. This is the idea that God is the unity of all unities. In God, everything is one. We hear these words and we recognize that there is nothing that God is not. 

This is why we cover our eyes. If they were open, we would be distracted just by seeing the differentiation all around us. We would see the floor and believe it to be separate from the ceiling. We would see a chair and believe that it is separate from a table. We would see other people and believe that they are separate from ourselves. We would see ourselves and believe that we are separate from God. We close our eyes while reciting the Shema so that we can remember, just for a moment, that these are all distracting illusions. We know for an instant that everything we can perceive, everything we can experience, and everything we are is a part of God.

The next time you say the words, Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad, close your eyes and allow yourself to be a part of the profound unity of all existence that is contained within God. Close your eyes and allow yourself to see.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Va'etchanan: Six Words
Va'eira: The God of Everything and Everywhere

This is the sermon I am presenting tonight at Temple Beit HaYam in Stuart, Florida.

You may remember that, ten years ago, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, placed a enormous monument displaying the Ten Commandments in front of the Alabama Supreme Court building. A federal court ordered Moore to remove the edifice, ruling that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. 

If you recall, the first of the Ten Commandments states, “I the Lord am your God.” The federal court ruled — correctly in my view — that a Buddhist, a Hindu, or, for that matter, an atheist, could certainly see the monument as a statement that his or her beliefs would not be honored in that court of law. Our legal system and our government are supposed to work equally for everyone — people of all religions and people of no religion. Statements about which deities we ought to worship have no place at the courthouse steps.

I remember thinking, at the time when Chief Justice Moore was fighting for this religious monument, ‘Has this guy ever even read the Ten Commandments?’ Quite prominent on the list of "divine dos and don’ts" is a statement about idolatry and graven images. The Torah seems quite clear that God does not like it when people revere objects as if they were God. That, it seemed to me is exactly what Moore was doing. In all of his statements opposing the federal court order, he argued that federal judges were placing themselves against God. Moore seemed to believe that opposing his statue was the same as opposing God, or, perhaps, that opposing him was opposing God. Either way, that’s a big no-no according to the second commandment. Only God is God — not a piece of stone and certainly not Chief Justice Moore.

Back in 2003, Moore was removed from office for his refusal to heed the federal court order. Unfortunately, the story does not end there. Predictably enough, he has sought to pedal his defeat on this hot-button issue into a political career. He has run, unsuccessfully, for governor of Alabama, and even has tinkered with the idea of running for President. Last year, he did win election to return to his former office as the Alabama Supreme Court’s Chief Justice. God help the great state of Alabama. 

It has been ten years since the episode with Moore and his giant marble monument of the Ten Commandments. Why should I bring it up now?

Well, for one thing, in the last ten years, efforts to confuse the roles of religion and government have become even more common. We have seen attempts to circumvent some of the requirements of the federal Affordable Care Act on the basis of religion. Some employers have claimed that they have the right to deny access to reproductive healthcare to their employees because it offends their religion. Never mind that the law does not require any employers to pay for reproductive healthcare benefits, and never mind that the employers are not the ones who would receive the care they oppose. Here in the early Twenty-First Century, the right to freedom of religion enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is being turned by some into the right to impose ones religion on others and to inflict ones beliefs onto other people's bodies. 

I have also noticed that the people in government who most loudly trumpet their love of God, tend to be very selective about which of God’s words they want to put into our laws. Opponents of same-sex marriage are very ready to quote Scriptures that call it an “abomination” for a man to lie with another man, but they never propose laws to ban other practices that the Bible also calls “abominations” — eating shellfish for example. Are they really trying to impose God's law, or just their selective reading of it?

In another example, the opponents of Immigration Reform never tire of talking about the threat to our nation posed by “outsiders” who “don’t share our culture and values.” They never seem to reflect, though, on God’s commandment to “love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). There is good stuff in the Bible for those who care to listen to it. 

And that brings me back to the Ten Commandments. Repeatedly in this week’s portion, Moses implores the people to observe all of the commandments, not just the ten engraved on the two tablets. He says, “Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, ‘Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people’” (Deuteronomy 4:6). 

This verse gives us a clue about how we can know if our secular laws based on the Bible are correct. When we do as God wants us to do, Moses says, the proof is not in the way we slavishly obey the Bible's words even if they don’t make sense to us. The proof of God’s commandments, according to Maimonides, Judaism’s greatest philosopher, is that they do make sense. Even those who come from outside our tradition will look at our laws and say, “What a noble and wise people those Jews are. They follow laws that actually make their people better and that make the world a better place.”

If there is anything that members of Congress should look at in the Bible when they consider our nation’s policies, it should be that. Our laws should actually make sense and they should make us a wiser, nobler, and more compassionate society. Our laws should make our nation the kind of place that we are proud to uphold as a model to other nations — not because of our material success or our military might, but because of our devotion to equality and justice. I see nothing in the Bible that tells us that we should build a nation on laws that impose the religion of some people on everyone else, but I see plenty that says that we should build our nation on concern for the plight of the poor, love of the stranger, and defense of the rights of the weak against the power of the mighty.

Ultimately, though, the laws of the Bible are not meant primarily for governments and politicians. They are meant for individuals. They are for people. They are for us. God and Moses did not give the Ten Commandments to frame public policy debates nearly as much as they gave them to help us make good choices in our own lives. So often, I hear people say, “Rabbi, I may not be religious, but I follow the Ten Commandments.” To such people I want to say, “That’s fine. Just make sure that you read them occasionally.” Just as I ask Chief Justice Moore, I ask you: Know what the Ten Commandments ask you to do:

1) “I am Adonai your God” — Know that you are not the center of the universe. Know that there is something beyond yourself to which you owe ultimate allegiance, even when it is inconvenient or against your desires.

2) “You shall have no other gods” — Do not turn objects, people or your desires into false gods. Let only God be God and don't pretend that your version of God is the only one for everyone else.

3) “You shall not swear falsely by the Name of God” — Make your mouth a temple of truth. Make every word you utter a testimony to your values.

4) “Observe the Sabbath and keep it” — Create room in your life for rest. Make Shabbat a treasure for yourself and for your family.

5) “Honor your father and mother” — Put the honor of your elders ahead of your own honor. Teach your children to do the same.

6) “You shall not murder” — Live a life that respects the lives of others, no matter how different they are from yourself.

7) “You shall not commit adultery” — Regard your intimate relationships as a sacred bond. Be true to your partner — with regard to your sexuality, your emotional life, and your personal integrity.

8) “You shall not steal” — Treat the property of others with even greater respect  than you would wish others to treat your property.

9) “You shall not bear false witness” — Demand the highest level of justice. Even when the accused is someone you disfavor, honor your commitment to fairness and equality for everyone.

10) “You shall not covet” — Be mindful of the way that our brains can trick us into justifying the pursuit of our desires. Do not become a slave to thoughts about wanting things that are bad for you, or that are not yours to have.

If we say that we are good people, and that we want to be good people, we have to live it in our own lives first. Religion is, first and foremost, about working on ourselves, not imposing our rules on others.

Judaism has a lot more than ten commandments, but, if you want to say that you live at least by the ten that are written on the doors of the ark in our sanctuary, be sure you know what they say. Be sure to take them seriously and make them more than an idol. Make them the foundation of your life.

Shabbat shalom.

Those six words of Hebrew do command a certain magic in the Jewish imagination. Even more than a secret password for Jews to identify each other, the Shema is like a password for identifying God.

שמע ישראל יי אלהינו יי אחד.

Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Those words appear in this week's Torah portion (Va'etchanan) as a part of a speech Moses delivers to the Israelites as they await their entry into the Land of Israel. He implores them to obey their God and remain loyal to God. Those words are part of every morning and evening service. They are the words that a Jew is supposed to say every night before going to sleep and the words that one is supposed to say on one's deathbed in preparation for the final passage.

You would think that there is consensus on what the words mean. There isn't.

Here is the translation of the Shema in the Union Prayerbook, the siddur my Temple used when I was a child:

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One."

Do you hear the emphasis on the final word "One"? This is a statement of God's uniqueness; a declaration of monotheism and the belief that the universe is ruled by a single, authoritative law. There can be no competing system to determine what is right and what is wrong. There is only one God who is the foundation of all that is true and right. That's what my Sunday School teacher told me and it never occurred to me that the Shema could mean anything else. 

That is, until I read this translation from the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Hebrew Bible:

"Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone."

The movement of the verb "is" changes the meaning of the verse considerably. This, now, is a statement of the attachment of God to God's people. Our identity is inextricably linked to the God who is ours. No other gods could ever be ours. We are defined by our national relationship with this God. Where the first translation is universal in its message, this translation is particular. The watchwords of our faith are not about the world; they are about our special and unique relationship with God.

To be fair, these two translations have very different purposes. The old Union Prayerbook wants to give people words to pray that will elevate their spirits and that will conform to their beliefs. The JPS translation seeks to convey the ancient meaning of the Hebrew as revealed by the study of its historical origin. Those differences in approach lead to real differences in translation.

Here is another translation to ponder. It comes from Mishkan T'filah, the prayerbook most recently published by the Reform Movement:

"Hear, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One!"

This translation puts the verb in both places. God is both the particular deity attached to the Jewish people and the universal and unique God of all creation. Using "Adonai" instead of "The Lord" also has an impact. It reminds us of the Name by which the universal God is known in particular to the Jewish people. "Adonai" is not God's name—the Name is understood to be unknowable and unpronounceable—so the word also calls attention to the mystery that surrounds God.

Finally, here is one more interpretation of the Shema. It is offered by Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, the Chasidic master known as the Sefat Emet. He wrote:

The meaning of 'Y-H-W-H is one' is not that He is the only God, negating other gods (though this too is true!), but the meaning is deeper than that: there is no being other than Him. [This is true] even though it seems otherwise to most people…everything that exists in the world, spiritual and physical, is God Himself. (Translation from Rabbi Arthur Green's These are the Words, p. 103)

The Sefat Emet espouses the most radical form of monotheism. Everything is God. We breathe God. We exist within God. We are part of God. The idea that God is, in any way, separate from us or from anything we experience is an illusion.  There is nothing that God is not.

So, the next time you recite the Shema—whether at services or at bedtime, whether sung loudly or whispered, whether three-times-a-day or once-in-a-while, whether standing or sitting—you can try to wrap your mind around all of these meanings. We declare, at the core of our belief, that God is the one, true and universal source of all law. We declare that, as a people, we Jews have a unique relationship with our God. We declare that God is a mystery who simultaneously can be our intimate partner and the foundation of all. We declare that God is all.

This is our password for identifying God in our lives. While it is not a secret, its meaning is not apparent on the surface, either. It is not a test for discovering other Jews. It is a test to discover the Jew within ourselves.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Va'etchanan: Finding God
Treasured and Chosen
Vayakhel: Being Part of Something Bigger

The Kotzker teaches that seeking God is the same thing as yearning for God. The very act of searching for God is enough—it is sufficient—to find God. The moment we recognize that finding God does not need to be a struggle—all that is needed is to open our hearts—God will enter us. The main thing that keeps us distant from God is the mistaken conviction that we have not yet done enough to merit God's nearness.